On CNN's Reliable (Liberal) Sources on Sunday, host Brian Stelter discussed the "impeachment messaging wars." In one corner, he put Rudy Giuliani and the "ultraconservative" OANN network making a "glorified anti-Biden attack ad." Meanwhile, "Democrats continue to take over daytime TV, for televised testimony from witnesses, and Republicans continue to claim the hearings are boring. The messaging war is vital, so which side is winning?"
Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine gave Stelter the answer he wanted. "I think we're all losing...it's not a sports game." (Stelter added "she rightly said" in his Sunday night newsletter). This is Democrat code for "Democrats aren't winning." Obviously, the TV show is meant to create great popular momentum for impeachment, and support for impeachment is actually slipping. So Nuzzi said "We won't know until the end."
Then it took a turn to the bizarre:
NUZZI: I think it's like comparing a Ken Burns documentary to The Wizard of Oz. One side is dealing with facts. One side cares about what actually happened and that is what they're talking about. And the other side is just kind of throwing things at the wall, seeing what will stick, and deflecting left and right. It's almost impossible to compare, because they're in completely different universes.
This claim, too, is -- to borrow from George Will -- the tinny arf of a Stelter lapdog. CNN claims its hourly product is "Facts First," always suggesting Fox News is a channel of wacky GOP talking points. CNN engages daily in a Democrat "messaging war," then claims to be a non-combatant.
The "Ken Burns documentary" is meant as high praise, but then, Burns is a pompous liberal PBS star who made a sappy propaganda piece for Ted Kennedy at the 2008 Democrat convention...and in 2016 said Trump's immigration statements were a page out of the Nazi playbook.
What CNN and MSNBC are doing here is creating a media bubble that claims their Trump-hating opinions are "facts," and the facts in Trump's favor can't be facts at all. The Democrat impeachment hearings are "historic," but the economic gains are not. Trump urging an investigation of Biden is an impeachable offense, and CNN and MSNBC refuse to actually waste their "news" muscle on investigating the Bidens, instead repeating the mantra there is "no evidence" anyone ever did anything wrong on any count.
